Vaughn Palmer: Adrian Dix’s plans for building a quality public service, starting at the top

Vaughn Palmer, Vancouver Sun columnist02.13.2013

NDP leader Adrian Dix is delighted that BCIT president Don Wright has agreed to step down to join the NDP transition team. If the party wins the election, the long-experienced Wright will become deputy minister to the premier, the senior public servant in the government.Lisa King
/ NOW

NDP leader Adrian Dix is delighted that BCIT president Don Wright has agreed to step down to join the NDP transition team. If the party wins the election, the long-experienced Wright will become deputy minister to the premier, the senior public servant in the government.Ward Perrin
/ PROVINCE

VICTORIA — Opposition leader Adrian Dix sent an important signal Wednesday with the announcement that in the event his New Democratic Party wins the election, he’ll name Don Wright as the senior public servant in the B.C. government.

“Consummate professional. Intelligent. Knows the province, knows the issues. Not an ideologue. Can’t say enough good things about him.”

Those were the kind of testimonials I gathered, from in and out of government, at the news that Wright would be stepping down from the presidency of BCIT to begin working with the NDP on the transition to power, assuming there is to be one.

Wright is a Harvard-educated economist who has long served a variety of B.C. administrations, NDP and Liberal, rising to the rank of deputy minister and handling some of the thorniest files in government, from teacher bargaining to softwood lumber negotiations with the U.S.

He also did a turn in the executive suite of one of the major forest companies and another as a consultant.

For the past five years, he has headed one of the country’s leading polytechnic universities, where he emphasized investment in the STEM disciplines — science, technology, engineering and mathematics.

Wright was also an advocate of higher education as a route to increasing productivity and reducing economic inequality, both themes that figure prominently in Adrian Dix’s list of priorities.

Indeed, an opinion piece that Wright published in The Vancouver Sun last September pretty much echoed Dix’s critique of the state of the B.C. economy.

“Hard truth No. 1: Thirty years ago, B.C.’s level of productivity was above the national average; now it is below the national average. Slipping as a province within a country which is also slipping internationally does not bode well for B.C.’s prosperity.

“Hard truth No. 2: The distribution of income in B.C. has become steadily more unequal over the past 30 years. This inequality tends to undermine the sense of shared prosperity necessary in a successful society.”

As for a solution, Wright pointed down the same road as Dix: “There is one very important factor that is common to both hard truths. Human capital — the knowledge, skills and competencies of the workforce. In an increasingly knowledge-intensive economy, this is increasingly the critical factor that determines whether a society is economically and socially prosperous.

“We need to ensure that capital is distributed as fairly and as comprehensively as possible (and) to demonstrate that we are building human capital, rather than merely filtering it, we need to look at the real value added as a result of time spent in post-secondary education.”

But it would be a mistake to conclude that Wright has merely served as an echo chamber for the views of one party on the political spectrum over the years.

In a 2007 opinion piece also published in The Sun, he and a co-author laid out the case for a carbon tax, built along much the same line as was adopted by the then-B.C. Liberal government the following year.

News of the Wright appointment must have caused consternation with at least one NDP ally, namely the B.C. Teachers’ Federation. His 2004 report on “dysfunctional” collective bargaining in the education sector, recommending it be replaced by arbitration on the final-offer selection model, was roundly denounced by the union as “a Liberal attack on teachers.”

Here’s Jinny Sims, then the head of the BCTF, today an NDP member of Parliament, on Wright’s report: “It effectively silences teachers’ voices, absolves the employer of any accountability for past failures at the bargaining table, and exhorts teachers to engage in dialogue with a government that refuses to talk to them or listen to them.”

Nor did Wright make either of the provincial extremes happy with the report he co-authored back in 2006 on log exports.

He recommended a tax on raw logs to discourage exports. He rejected calls for an outright ban, saying that many stands of trees could not be harvested economically at domestic prices, thereby telling a hard truth that organized labour did not want to hear.

In surveying the views that Wright has expressed over the years, I’m not arguing that those would necessarily be translated into public policy in a government he would serve as deputy minister to the premier. The deputy’s job is to suggest options and underscore risks, but to implement the policy decisions taken by the cabinet as a whole.

But the larger point is to emphasize the broad range of issues he’s tackled, his depth of knowledge about the province, and demonstrated willingness to suggest balanced solutions to complex problems.

Dix, for his part, described Wright as his No. 1 choice to head the public service. He was delighted when the prospective recruit not only agreed to take the job but also to assume the risk of resigning from his current post before the voters have had their say.

Presumptuous? A little, though Gordon Campbell similarly recruited public servant Brenda Eaton to his transition team long before the 2001 election. And as Dix noted, if the voters do opt for a change of government, the NDP needs to be ready to hit the ground running.

Plus there are those signals he wanted to send about the importance of building a professional, non-partisan, merit-based public service, starting at the top.

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Vaughn Palmer: Adrian Dix’s plans for building a quality public service, starting at the top

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